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Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the ga

Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.

fooqux 1y ago
> Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story. Curious. You don't think that this slippery slope we're on is worth reporting on?
- ectospheno 1y ago
  Yes I do. Already discussed. This article adds nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566
- kulahan 1y ago
  I don’t. Slippery slope is always a fallacy until it affects something we want to conserve. There has been a huge push for an absolute lack of censorship in games, so it’s… pretty predictable that we’d see the pendulum swing back, I guess?
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time you launch the game...)
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  Steam is just way better than other stores, because it's not just a store, it's got a bajillion features besides. And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.
  - tstrimple 1y ago
    Cloud saves that work reliably and games that support the steam workshop instead of 3rd party mod managers makes a huge difference to me. The reality of putting down a game on my desktop and then starting it up again in the same state on my laptop later that night without me having to do or think about anything across basically every game in their store is amazing. I can spend hours crafting my perfect Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld mod setup and it's just saved and available on every computer I play on.
- jjice 1y ago
  I bought a game on Epic over Steam for the better price once and I'll never do it again. Steam is just too good of a platform and Epic has a lot to work out. Valve has also earned my trust way more than Epic has. Epic comes off as a company of the people sometimes when they drop a suit against Apple or something, but they're exactly the same when it suits them (like their dark patterns for in-game purchases). There have been timed exclusives on Epic that I just waited out, partially out of spite, and mostly because I just wouldn't want to own the game on something that wasn't Steam.
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  - bsimpson 1y ago
    Epic is scummy as hell. They try to play folk hero when it suits them, but someone who actually cared about individual well-being wouldn't lock Linux players out of their flagship games, or use dark patterns like artificial scarcity to get people to spend more time/money in their ecosystem.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      Agreed. Epic the past couple of years has been a great example of the "a broken clock is correct twice a day" idiom, at best.
    - AlexandrB 1y ago
      Yes, if Epic is the cure it's worse than the disease. I do think Steam needs competition to keep them innovative/honest though that's why I try to buy stuff on GoG when possible.
- kalaksi 1y ago
  That's basically me. While Steam can always be improved (and has been), it has worked well and to me looks better than the alternatives. Additionally, I trust Valve and value it's products. So I don't mind paying more and it's also very convenient to use just Steam and not worry about anything else.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    I know this is far from a hot take, but I really think people need to be more weary of what will happen with Valve once Gabe passes. No amount of profitability seems to stop people from demanding more even at the cost of longterm viability. Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve
    - tracker1 1y ago
      Kind of a terrifying thought... Not familiar enough with Valve/Steam's corporate structure to know if they have a governance model in their founding documents to help prevent this.
      - Forgeties79 1y ago
        There isn’t a document in the world that can’t be overcome with enough cash incentive unfortunately lol
- dizlexic 1y ago
  I'm one of those. I have a few reasons. Initially it was just wanting to keep things in one place as much as possible, but as a Linux guy it's morphed into fierce platform loyalty as a way to support Linux gaming.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    I think it's entirely fair though. Valve has put a lot of its money where its mouth is on this. I get that it started as a hegemony against Windows' store, but it's been great for the Linux community as a whole. By some metrics, desktop Linux is sitting around 6%, and I think that Valve is almost solely responsible (along with all wine devs) for at least a full 1% of that. It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately. Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.
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  - freedomben 1y ago
    Same (excepting GOG, where I buy the game if they have it, but they usually don't). I'm so grateful to Steam for working on Linux that I actually feel good about buying games knowing it's a vote for Linux. It definitely helps that it works (almost) flawlessly. If it stopped working well, I would stop using them, but with the current status quo it's a rare example of a company I transact with that I actually feel good about
- Insanity 1y ago
  I'm included in that. Steam is great, I've been using it for 21 years, and I don't need/want another launcher. Occasionally I was forced into using others, when a game only released on Epic / Origin / Battle.net. But they all felt worse than Steam. So given a choice for the game, I'll buy it on Steam even at a higher price.
- arprocter 1y ago
  Funny you mentioned Epic - I bought something there and played it for a while, until one day it just...refused to load Ended up in a loop of support asking for logs ad infinitum, while ignoring the fact that when I installed the client and game on a separate computer it crashed at the same point. Chalked it up to experience and just decided to not give them any more of my money
- creaturemachine 1y ago
  Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    Haha, remember when it was "the weird tray app for playing Counter Strike"?
  - ecshafer 1y ago
    I love steam. A big part of my complaints 20 years ago was that I barely ran these games in the first place! Nowadays computers are a lot more powerful compared to games. Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.
    - HolyLampshade 1y ago
      I completely agree with you. 21 years ago when it was released it was simply “yet another competitor” to the sort of overlay systems that gamespy and the like were trying to implement. You installed it because Half-Life 2 (and the litany of mods that became empires into themselves) required it, but it took years for it to develop in a direction that pointed to where we are now. The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold. I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.
      - iamtedd 1y ago
        Also having to find and backup your save files if you wanted/needed to reinstall Windows.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      >Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer Except when they only added any sort of return mechanism after violating consumer rights laws in all sorts of jurisdictions for like a decade. Though that was significantly less painful back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful. Steam's pro-consumer-ness is absurdly overblown, but the rest of consumer facing corporations are so fucking awful in comparison that they look like angels. They're also mostly just trying to keep anyone from looking at the closet full of profits explicitly from enabling underage gambling. Not that I'm a hater, but people need to keep perspective. Valve is just a company that is slightly less abhorrent in it's practices.
- immibis 1y ago
  For desktop gaming, GOG should be prioritized above Steam.
  - mnahkies 1y ago
    +1 - I used GOG for the first time the other week to get a copy of Morrowind so I could see how https://openmw.org/ https://openmw.org/ was these days, and it was a really good experience. I did have to use some obscure tool to extract it being on Linux but it's nice to know I won't have to purchase another copy again. There's a number of games I've had to repeat purchase (mostly from disk to digital), and with modding the forced auto updates on steam can also be a pain
  - Jach 1y ago
    GOG is in bed with Amazon. I have over 130 games via GOG, only a handful I paid for -- right now I can only think of the Yakuza 0-6 collection that was priced so low I had to do it even though I played them all on a friend's xbox before. The rest are from Amazon's gifting of them to me via having a Prime account and Twitch account. Many are games I already bought and played on Steam, they're good games they're not just gifting trash. In any case, just like Epic and their mass of freely given games, it all but guarantees I never give those platforms a dime especially if I think a game will be gifted eventually. (It makes me hesitate sometimes on steam purchases too, which is probably part of the point, but I've got a giant backlog so buying can wait anyway, and it's a rare game that I want to buy and play right now.) I'll continue supporting Steam over GOG for PC gaming, especially as a Linux user.
    - teamonkey 1y ago
      Honestly I find “they give away free games so I won’t use them” to be a weird take. In any case, often with these free deals the developer is compensated according to how many installs the game gets. Number of installs during sales is also a metric that helps gain funding for future titles. So if Epic/GOG give away a game you already have and like, taking the time to add it to your collection, installing and running it briefly may help the developer out.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  Lord Gaben has almost a cult like following, so any missteps are going to be ignored. Steam is objectively great compared to other stores so it will barely see a problem. If the fact that children are gambling skins on the platform barely affects them, an issue they are in full control of, I doubt this controversy where they were pressured externally will cause any long lasting damage to them.
- J_Shelby_J 1y ago
  It’s because steam is 100% an aberration in our modern world. The closest comparison is, maybe, Costco? And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.
  - transcriptase 1y ago
    The “do nothing and win” strategy has served Valve well. The fact is every publisher wants their own launcher on start-up running all the time collecting data, updating all the time, throwing popups at the user. The user on the other hand doesn’t want 8 different bloated game launchers slowing startup, siphoning bandwidth, constantly updating, using a bunch of memory, and each using 1-2% of CPU at idle doing who knows what.
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      I have Ubisoft Connect launching because one game (Trackmania). And it is most annoying piece of software on my computer. Popping up sometimes even in middle of gameplay... And it can not even correctly close itself, but instead threw an error... These clients really have zero respect for users.
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- taude 1y ago
  Same, Steam is my gateway, and I don't have any issues with them.
- sersi 1y ago
  The only other game store I'll use is Gog (ok, and exceptionally itch.io)... Epic is unfortunately nowhere near good enough. The others are even worse
pjmlp 1y ago
I never installed, nor plan to. OS specific stores, consoles, and retrogaming already have more games than I am able to play the rest of my life. If they were like Loki in the Linux gamming efforts, I would be willing to kind of sponsor it, for Proton I already have Windows at home.
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- babypuncher 1y ago
  Valve/Steam is the reason gaming on Linux is even viable today
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Unfortunately by translating Windows games, Valve doesn't even manage to get game studios to port Android/Linux (NDK) into GNU/Linux, shows how much studios care. Better keep targeting Windows.
    - babypuncher 1y ago
      I think this is ultimately a benefit. I've had too many proprietary native Linux games that slowly broke overtime as libraries they depended on changed or became deprecated. Hosting unmaintained proprietary software like this has always been difficult with Linux. With Proton we basically have a common stable runtime that handles all the platform specific needs of a video game. It just so happens that runtime is largely binary-compatible with Windows. It's easier for devs to support when all they have to do is stick to a Proton-compatible subset of the Win32 API. Users get way more games. And anecdotally my experience as a user is generally better than with true native ports. It's a big net win.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Devs don't support anything, they target Windows as if Proton did not exist. It is up to Valve to make it work. It is a loss for GNU/Linux as gamming platform. Do you think anyone would be paying for Nintendo and PlayStation consoles, if they were running XBox OS translations, instead of having the games natively target them? That is why all those cheap Chinese handhelds never go nowhere, being basically MAME devices.
bob1029 1y ago
The customer side of Steam is great but I think their partner program is even more impressive. The quality of support I've received as a developer on Steam makes Apple's App Store ecosystem look like joke.
- iamtedd 1y ago
  This needs to be more widely known. As a consumer, I would care more about the developer experience with Steam if more stories were told about it vs. say Epic, but I understand if there are things like commercial-in-confidence, or NDA that prevent it.
nyeah 1y ago
Yes we all pray to Gaben that this crisis will pass. I am honored to pay more in His name.
maverwa 1y ago
As someone who’s using steam daily for probably 50-75% of their lifetime now: I don’t love them, but it’s the lesser evil for sure. Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative. XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a game in steam, and I almost forgot the epic store exists, despite their “free game” Marketing campaign. It’s not perfect, it’s anti-consumer way to often, and it’s for sure a monopoly’s, but steam is still my favorite poison And yes, if they decide to disable me account and cut me off my pile of shame I will have an impact. But owning games does not seem to be an option generally. Exceptions exist, ofc.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  GOG is great but I'd like them even more if they did some of the wine/proton work that Steam does for Linux users. For the dosbox games at least it's not much to do (for them nor for myself to be fair.) Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.
  - maverwa 1y ago
    I won’t complain about anyone investing into wine/proton. GOG/CDPR just seem less willing or less capable of spending that money. Valve is essentially printing money. From sales, but also from other, morally less likeable sources like gambling. It’s nice to see them spending at least a tiny part of this in ways that serve the greater good (besides their own business). Same point: it’s not good, but that’s reality for you.
  - Ferret7446 1y ago
    To be clear, there are many games on Steam without DRM. It's up to the publisher whether Steam DRM is used or not (or if any other 3rd party DRM is used, for that matter). I suspect almost all of the games on GoG, if they are also on Steam, also don't have DRM on Steam.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
Steam is great at turning a blind eye to underage gambling
godelski 1y ago
Interestingly Valve makes the most money per head compared to any other company. At $19m/head it's magnitudes above Meta and the average salary is $1.4m[0]! I'm not trying to disparage steam, I actually really like them[1]. I'm pointing it out because it's a business strategy we don't see that often: loyalty. I mean what other billionaire do you know where there's tons of memes of but is also overwhelmingly seen in a positive light? Sure, he doesn't have Elon money but dude has $10bn, I don't think another $290bn is really going to make a big difference in his life[2]. He has way less controversy than Elon had even before all the political stuff. Steam is like Costco, except Gabe is a billionaire. What I'm trying to say is that you can become a billionaire by building a quality product and through customer loyalty. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be fucking rich, your employees can be fucking rich, you can build a useful, AND a beloved product. In a time where we live in a Lemon Economy, where it is all about making the s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ minimum viable product, where we rush for the newest feature and loudest bells and whistles (regardless of if they actually work), Steam stands out. I want more companies like Valve/Steam. [0] https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenue-revealed-in-lawsuit/ https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu... [1] Like another user pointed out, they won be over with Linux gaming. I've had a great experience with them, even from the early days. You could tell through github issues they cared. They wouldn't just dismiss things like "oh, we don't support that distro" and actually just figure out what's going on (because your distro doesn't actually matter). They were clearly nerds themselves and nerds that cared. [2] You just can't spend that kind of money. Fucking MacKenzie Scott is trying to give her wealth away as fast as possible, has already given away half her wealth, but she has the same net worth as when she divorced Bezos. Compound interest is a crazy thing. [3] P.S. Fuck Visa and Mastercard. Unless my transaction is illegal, you better fucking process it. Anything short of that is holding my own money hostage. That is fucking theft. You created the duopoly. Don't get greedy or you'll lose it.
- HWR_14 1y ago
  The estimates are that Tether makes more per employee than any other company, at somewhere in the hundreds of millions.
mumbisChungo 1y ago
After using steam for over 20 years I'd say I feel quite neutral about steam, but actively disdainful toward the alternatives.

fooqux 1y ago

> Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story. Curious. You don't think that this slippery slope we're on is worth reporting on?

ectospheno 1y ago
Yes I do. Already discussed. This article adds nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566
kulahan 1y ago
I don’t. Slippery slope is always a fallacy until it affects something we want to conserve. There has been a huge push for an absolute lack of censorship in games, so it’s… pretty predictable that we’d see the pendulum swing back, I guess?

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time you launch the game...)

TulliusCicero 1y ago
Steam is just way better than other stores, because it's not just a store, it's got a bajillion features besides. And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.
- tstrimple 1y ago
  Cloud saves that work reliably and games that support the steam workshop instead of 3rd party mod managers makes a huge difference to me. The reality of putting down a game on my desktop and then starting it up again in the same state on my laptop later that night without me having to do or think about anything across basically every game in their store is amazing. I can spend hours crafting my perfect Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld mod setup and it's just saved and available on every computer I play on.
jjice 1y ago
I bought a game on Epic over Steam for the better price once and I'll never do it again. Steam is just too good of a platform and Epic has a lot to work out. Valve has also earned my trust way more than Epic has. Epic comes off as a company of the people sometimes when they drop a suit against Apple or something, but they're exactly the same when it suits them (like their dark patterns for in-game purchases). There have been timed exclusives on Epic that I just waited out, partially out of spite, and mostly because I just wouldn't want to own the game on something that wasn't Steam.
- deleted 1y ago
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- bsimpson 1y ago
  Epic is scummy as hell. They try to play folk hero when it suits them, but someone who actually cared about individual well-being wouldn't lock Linux players out of their flagship games, or use dark patterns like artificial scarcity to get people to spend more time/money in their ecosystem.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    Agreed. Epic the past couple of years has been a great example of the "a broken clock is correct twice a day" idiom, at best.
  - AlexandrB 1y ago
    Yes, if Epic is the cure it's worse than the disease. I do think Steam needs competition to keep them innovative/honest though that's why I try to buy stuff on GoG when possible.
kalaksi 1y ago
That's basically me. While Steam can always be improved (and has been), it has worked well and to me looks better than the alternatives. Additionally, I trust Valve and value it's products. So I don't mind paying more and it's also very convenient to use just Steam and not worry about anything else.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  I know this is far from a hot take, but I really think people need to be more weary of what will happen with Valve once Gabe passes. No amount of profitability seems to stop people from demanding more even at the cost of longterm viability. Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve
  - tracker1 1y ago
    Kind of a terrifying thought... Not familiar enough with Valve/Steam's corporate structure to know if they have a governance model in their founding documents to help prevent this.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      There isn’t a document in the world that can’t be overcome with enough cash incentive unfortunately lol
dizlexic 1y ago
I'm one of those. I have a few reasons. Initially it was just wanting to keep things in one place as much as possible, but as a Linux guy it's morphed into fierce platform loyalty as a way to support Linux gaming.
- tracker1 1y ago
  I think it's entirely fair though. Valve has put a lot of its money where its mouth is on this. I get that it started as a hegemony against Windows' store, but it's been great for the Linux community as a whole. By some metrics, desktop Linux is sitting around 6%, and I think that Valve is almost solely responsible (along with all wine devs) for at least a full 1% of that. It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately. Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.
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- freedomben 1y ago
  Same (excepting GOG, where I buy the game if they have it, but they usually don't). I'm so grateful to Steam for working on Linux that I actually feel good about buying games knowing it's a vote for Linux. It definitely helps that it works (almost) flawlessly. If it stopped working well, I would stop using them, but with the current status quo it's a rare example of a company I transact with that I actually feel good about
Insanity 1y ago
I'm included in that. Steam is great, I've been using it for 21 years, and I don't need/want another launcher. Occasionally I was forced into using others, when a game only released on Epic / Origin / Battle.net. But they all felt worse than Steam. So given a choice for the game, I'll buy it on Steam even at a higher price.
arprocter 1y ago
Funny you mentioned Epic - I bought something there and played it for a while, until one day it just...refused to load Ended up in a loop of support asking for logs ad infinitum, while ignoring the fact that when I installed the client and game on a separate computer it crashed at the same point. Chalked it up to experience and just decided to not give them any more of my money
creaturemachine 1y ago
Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  Haha, remember when it was "the weird tray app for playing Counter Strike"?
- ecshafer 1y ago
  I love steam. A big part of my complaints 20 years ago was that I barely ran these games in the first place! Nowadays computers are a lot more powerful compared to games. Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.
  - HolyLampshade 1y ago
    I completely agree with you. 21 years ago when it was released it was simply “yet another competitor” to the sort of overlay systems that gamespy and the like were trying to implement. You installed it because Half-Life 2 (and the litany of mods that became empires into themselves) required it, but it took years for it to develop in a direction that pointed to where we are now. The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold. I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.
    - iamtedd 1y ago
      Also having to find and backup your save files if you wanted/needed to reinstall Windows.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    >Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer Except when they only added any sort of return mechanism after violating consumer rights laws in all sorts of jurisdictions for like a decade. Though that was significantly less painful back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful. Steam's pro-consumer-ness is absurdly overblown, but the rest of consumer facing corporations are so fucking awful in comparison that they look like angels. They're also mostly just trying to keep anyone from looking at the closet full of profits explicitly from enabling underage gambling. Not that I'm a hater, but people need to keep perspective. Valve is just a company that is slightly less abhorrent in it's practices.
immibis 1y ago
For desktop gaming, GOG should be prioritized above Steam.
- mnahkies 1y ago
  +1 - I used GOG for the first time the other week to get a copy of Morrowind so I could see how https://openmw.org/ https://openmw.org/ was these days, and it was a really good experience. I did have to use some obscure tool to extract it being on Linux but it's nice to know I won't have to purchase another copy again. There's a number of games I've had to repeat purchase (mostly from disk to digital), and with modding the forced auto updates on steam can also be a pain
- Jach 1y ago
  GOG is in bed with Amazon. I have over 130 games via GOG, only a handful I paid for -- right now I can only think of the Yakuza 0-6 collection that was priced so low I had to do it even though I played them all on a friend's xbox before. The rest are from Amazon's gifting of them to me via having a Prime account and Twitch account. Many are games I already bought and played on Steam, they're good games they're not just gifting trash. In any case, just like Epic and their mass of freely given games, it all but guarantees I never give those platforms a dime especially if I think a game will be gifted eventually. (It makes me hesitate sometimes on steam purchases too, which is probably part of the point, but I've got a giant backlog so buying can wait anyway, and it's a rare game that I want to buy and play right now.) I'll continue supporting Steam over GOG for PC gaming, especially as a Linux user.
  - teamonkey 1y ago
    Honestly I find “they give away free games so I won’t use them” to be a weird take. In any case, often with these free deals the developer is compensated according to how many installs the game gets. Number of installs during sales is also a metric that helps gain funding for future titles. So if Epic/GOG give away a game you already have and like, taking the time to add it to your collection, installing and running it briefly may help the developer out.
darth_avocado 1y ago
Lord Gaben has almost a cult like following, so any missteps are going to be ignored. Steam is objectively great compared to other stores so it will barely see a problem. If the fact that children are gambling skins on the platform barely affects them, an issue they are in full control of, I doubt this controversy where they were pressured externally will cause any long lasting damage to them.
J_Shelby_J 1y ago
It’s because steam is 100% an aberration in our modern world. The closest comparison is, maybe, Costco? And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.
- transcriptase 1y ago
  The “do nothing and win” strategy has served Valve well. The fact is every publisher wants their own launcher on start-up running all the time collecting data, updating all the time, throwing popups at the user. The user on the other hand doesn’t want 8 different bloated game launchers slowing startup, siphoning bandwidth, constantly updating, using a bunch of memory, and each using 1-2% of CPU at idle doing who knows what.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    I have Ubisoft Connect launching because one game (Trackmania). And it is most annoying piece of software on my computer. Popping up sometimes even in middle of gameplay... And it can not even correctly close itself, but instead threw an error... These clients really have zero respect for users.
- deleted 1y ago
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taude 1y ago
Same, Steam is my gateway, and I don't have any issues with them.
sersi 1y ago
The only other game store I'll use is Gog (ok, and exceptionally itch.io)... Epic is unfortunately nowhere near good enough. The others are even worse

pjmlp 1y ago

I never installed, nor plan to. OS specific stores, consoles, and retrogaming already have more games than I am able to play the rest of my life. If they were like Loki in the Linux gamming efforts, I would be willing to kind of sponsor it, for Proton I already have Windows at home.

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babypuncher 1y ago
Valve/Steam is the reason gaming on Linux is even viable today
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Unfortunately by translating Windows games, Valve doesn't even manage to get game studios to port Android/Linux (NDK) into GNU/Linux, shows how much studios care. Better keep targeting Windows.
  - babypuncher 1y ago
    I think this is ultimately a benefit. I've had too many proprietary native Linux games that slowly broke overtime as libraries they depended on changed or became deprecated. Hosting unmaintained proprietary software like this has always been difficult with Linux. With Proton we basically have a common stable runtime that handles all the platform specific needs of a video game. It just so happens that runtime is largely binary-compatible with Windows. It's easier for devs to support when all they have to do is stick to a Proton-compatible subset of the Win32 API. Users get way more games. And anecdotally my experience as a user is generally better than with true native ports. It's a big net win.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Devs don't support anything, they target Windows as if Proton did not exist. It is up to Valve to make it work. It is a loss for GNU/Linux as gamming platform. Do you think anyone would be paying for Nintendo and PlayStation consoles, if they were running XBox OS translations, instead of having the games natively target them? That is why all those cheap Chinese handhelds never go nowhere, being basically MAME devices.

bob1029 1y ago

The customer side of Steam is great but I think their partner program is even more impressive. The quality of support I've received as a developer on Steam makes Apple's App Store ecosystem look like joke.

iamtedd 1y ago
This needs to be more widely known. As a consumer, I would care more about the developer experience with Steam if more stories were told about it vs. say Epic, but I understand if there are things like commercial-in-confidence, or NDA that prevent it.

nyeah 1y ago

Yes we all pray to Gaben that this crisis will pass. I am honored to pay more in His name.

maverwa 1y ago

As someone who’s using steam daily for probably 50-75% of their lifetime now: I don’t love them, but it’s the lesser evil for sure. Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative. XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a game in steam, and I almost forgot the epic store exists, despite their “free game” Marketing campaign. It’s not perfect, it’s anti-consumer way to often, and it’s for sure a monopoly’s, but steam is still my favorite poison And yes, if they decide to disable me account and cut me off my pile of shame I will have an impact. But owning games does not seem to be an option generally. Exceptions exist, ofc.

lupusreal 1y ago
GOG is great but I'd like them even more if they did some of the wine/proton work that Steam does for Linux users. For the dosbox games at least it's not much to do (for them nor for myself to be fair.) Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.
- maverwa 1y ago
  I won’t complain about anyone investing into wine/proton. GOG/CDPR just seem less willing or less capable of spending that money. Valve is essentially printing money. From sales, but also from other, morally less likeable sources like gambling. It’s nice to see them spending at least a tiny part of this in ways that serve the greater good (besides their own business). Same point: it’s not good, but that’s reality for you.
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  To be clear, there are many games on Steam without DRM. It's up to the publisher whether Steam DRM is used or not (or if any other 3rd party DRM is used, for that matter). I suspect almost all of the games on GoG, if they are also on Steam, also don't have DRM on Steam.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

Steam is great at turning a blind eye to underage gambling

godelski 1y ago

Interestingly Valve makes the most money per head compared to any other company. At $19m/head it's magnitudes above Meta and the average salary is $1.4m[0]! I'm not trying to disparage steam, I actually really like them[1]. I'm pointing it out because it's a business strategy we don't see that often: loyalty. I mean what other billionaire do you know where there's tons of memes of but is also overwhelmingly seen in a positive light? Sure, he doesn't have Elon money but dude has $10bn, I don't think another $290bn is really going to make a big difference in his life[2]. He has way less controversy than Elon had even before all the political stuff. Steam is like Costco, except Gabe is a billionaire. What I'm trying to say is that you can become a billionaire by building a quality product and through customer loyalty. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be fucking rich, your employees can be fucking rich, you can build a useful, AND a beloved product. In a time where we live in a Lemon Economy, where it is all about making the s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ minimum viable product, where we rush for the newest feature and loudest bells and whistles (regardless of if they actually work), Steam stands out. I want more companies like Valve/Steam. [0] https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenue-revealed-in-lawsuit/ https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu... [1] Like another user pointed out, they won be over with Linux gaming. I've had a great experience with them, even from the early days. You could tell through github issues they cared. They wouldn't just dismiss things like "oh, we don't support that distro" and actually just figure out what's going on (because your distro doesn't actually matter). They were clearly nerds themselves and nerds that cared. [2] You just can't spend that kind of money. Fucking MacKenzie Scott is trying to give her wealth away as fast as possible, has already given away half her wealth, but she has the same net worth as when she divorced Bezos. Compound interest is a crazy thing. [3] P.S. Fuck Visa and Mastercard. Unless my transaction is illegal, you better fucking process it. Anything short of that is holding my own money hostage. That is fucking theft. You created the duopoly. Don't get greedy or you'll lose it.

HWR_14 1y ago
The estimates are that Tether makes more per employee than any other company, at somewhere in the hundreds of millions.

mumbisChungo 1y ago

After using steam for over 20 years I'd say I feel quite neutral about steam, but actively disdainful toward the alternatives.